VERY NICE! What did you use for a guide/fixture? Back in the 1970's when I was at a restoration shop we had a special guide to do the Bugatti dash and firewalls. I always enjoyed doing it, but you never knew how it would look untill you washed off all the valve grinding coumpound.
Eastwood sells a kit for smaller stuff, I used it on the dash of my OT car. easy to use, hard to master. Drill press makes it easier for small stuff. I bet doing a firewall was tricky! Looks great....
Looks Great! By the way,,, What kind of valve covers on your engine,,looks like old Cal Custom kinda?
Nice job! We have some 3/4" rolocs at work, I was thinking of trying. What grit did you use? or did you use the scotch brite type rolocs?
There just round scotchbrite or other sanding discs that have a threaded center nub sticking out, you can get em at most auto parts stores. heres a link to see what they look like http://www.amazon.com/Scotch-Brite-00051144142125-Hard-Roloc-Disc/dp/B002KMXK5I
Lots of threads on this with extra info "engine turning" will get anyone looking tons of hits. I tested many methods. Rolocs work ok but Cratex sticks/mandrels work the best in my experiments.
i did most of my interior like this. Much easier with a drill press, just took a roloc wheel and cut down a scuff pad. i just hope it isnt too shiny when the sun hits it.
for small swirls , i read where you can use a wooden dowel , using a drill press . i haven,t tried this yet but i,m sure it would work .........................
Yeah, wooden dowels and some emery worked great on aluminium for me, using a drill press. Anybody know how you do it on somthing 'in situ'? Like if I wanted to do it on a dashboard without pulling the dash? Or a vintage Bugatti engine block when I get the money . . . When I do it with a pistol grip it just skips all over the place, no matter how well I hold it.
I did a small piece in high school but can't remember, is there a differance in the final look starting with raw un polished aluminum, brass etc. as compared to a polished piece?
You need to make a guide, we had one when we did the Bugatti work. Just picture a long strip of aluminum with a series of holes evenly spaced then cut it in half. The half hole is the guide for the shaft in the drill. Hope this discription works for you. Bob
Nice one - that makes a load of sense. You still use an ordinary power drill with dowel to do the marking? When I did my aluminium it was just bar stock, didn't do anything to it other than the engine turning and came out ok. Used 600 or so emery on a block of balsa inside a fitting that took a socket (they were the nearest things to hand that went in the pillar drill). I'd never done it before, it was just an experiment to see how it went. Went very well. I didn't use a guide or compound table either (I would if I cared how it looked). The spacing was around one radius of the swirl, since that looked about right. Each row was offset so the swirls in the row below went 'between' those in the rows above. What amazed me was how uniform it looked without trying, though again, if you care, use a guide. The only thing with the emery was that it would occasionally hold a bit of grit, and you'd see that as a circle drawn into the swifl pattern. I ws only messing around so it didn't matter, I bet there are some much better methods mentioned here.
for dash board stuff, I use a Cratex stick slid into a chunk of copper tubing to help support it, and come up with about 5/8" swirls. The copper tubing helps supprot around the curcumfrence and provides a cleaner, rounder swirl each time. I usually work free hand on the drill press, starting at the upper left hand corner, half on and half off on both sides. I work left to right from there moving one half a swirl at a time until I reach the end of the part. Slide it all the way back to the left and drop down one half swirl, advance one half swirl and work one half swirl at a time to the left... Repeat until your brain shuts off!!! I have done lots of stuff ranging from dash boards and step plates to the 2 36' x 8' monument signs at Phoenix International Raceway park using this method. Bigger turning mandrel on the signs of course! Sorry I don't have any pictures to post at this time. I'll shoot some and post soon.
Besides the guide there was a sheet of plywood with a tape or yardstick on both sides to aline the guide so you were running straight parellel lines. The aluminum sheet was screwed to the plywood and covered with a course valve gringing coumpound, we bought it in one gallon cans from somewere. Rubber pads were glued to a fixture that fit in a hand drill. This fixture had a ball and pin ty[pe oy universal that allowed the pad to have sopme freedom of movement. Worked well. Bob
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